[theme-reviewers] Proposal for new guideline
Angelo Bertolli
angelo at bertolli.org
Tue Mar 6 22:33:57 UTC 2012
Backlinks to the theme's home page could have nofollow in them, although
I suspect that not too many people would do this.
Anyway, I will correct myself: we're just talking about guidelines, right?
On 03/06/2012 05:32 PM, Emil Uzelac wrote:
> Why would you use nofollow?
>
> On Mar 6, 2012 4:30 PM, "Angelo Bertolli" <angelo at bertolli.org
> <mailto:angelo at bertolli.org>> wrote:
>
> So are theme developers also restricted from using nofollow? It is
> functional.
>
> I don't think theme developers should be restricted from using
> rel="canonical" just because some of them may use it wrong, or because
> Google treats it a certain way for search results.
>
> On 03/06/2012 05:24 PM, Chip Bennett wrote:
> > The criterion for me is Presentational vs Functinoal. I think that
> > rel=canonical clearly falls under "Functional", and therefore is Plugin
> > territory.
> >
> > Chip
> >
> > On Tue, Mar 6, 2012 at 4:23 PM, Emil Uzelac <emil at themeid.com
> <mailto:emil at themeid.com>
> > <mailto:emil at themeid.com <mailto:emil at themeid.com>>> wrote:
> >
> > I was reading from my phone....
> >
> > I agree that Themes should not mess with rel="canonical" at all.
> > Majority people are devs not SEO consultants. Required not to
> use is
> > what I believe we should do.
> >
> > On Mar 6, 2012 4:17 PM, "Joost de Valk" <joost at yoast.com
> <mailto:joost at yoast.com>
> > <mailto:joost at yoast.com <mailto:joost at yoast.com>>> wrote:
> >
> > It has nothing to do with using my plugin or not. It's
> something
> > even my plugin can't fix :-)
> >
> > Best,
> > Joost
> >
> > Sent from my iPhone
> >
> > On 6 mrt. 2012, at 23:14, Emil Uzelac <emil at themeid.com
> <mailto:emil at themeid.com>
> > <mailto:emil at themeid.com <mailto:emil at themeid.com>>> wrote:
> >
> >> If they do not use your plugin would this hurt the SEO?
> >>
> >> On Mar 6, 2012 3:47 PM, "Joost de Valk" <joost at yoast.com
> <mailto:joost at yoast.com>
> >> <mailto:joost at yoast.com <mailto:joost at yoast.com>>> wrote:
> >>
> >> Hi all,
> >>
> >> tldr version: I would like a guideline that tells theme
> >> developers to /not/ include a rel=canonical link in their
> >> theme as it hurts people more than it helps in a lot
> of cases.
> >>
> >> long version:
> >>
> >> As some of you probably know, I do a lot of SEO
> >> consultancy. Some of it is related to people who have
> >> suddenly lost all their rankings and want me to help fix
> >> it for them. Today I helped out a blogger, unpaid because
> >> I just liked his blog as it was about children with Down
> >> Syndrome.
> >>
> >> He had recently switched themes /and /started using my
> >> WordPress SEO plugin, and of course he was blaming my
> >> plugin for his sudden loss of rankings. What I found out
> >> though, was that the theme had the following rel=canonical
> >> link in the header.php:
> >>
> >> <link rel="canonical" href="<?php echo home_url(); ?>" />
> >>
> >> above the call to wp_head. This was causing each
> >> individual post to have a canonical point back to the
> >> homepage. Now you should know that Google especially sees
> >> a canonical as somewhat of a "soft 301 redirect". It
> >> basically takes a page that has a canonical pointing
> >> elsewhere out of the rankings. The effect is quite
> dramatic.
> >>
> >> This was a premium theme, whose authors I have since
> >> emailed. It got me thinking though: is this in the WP.org
> >> <http://WP.org> guidelines? Apparently, it's not.
> >> WordPress itself adds a rel="canonical" through wp_head on
> >> single pages, and there's a patch in Trac to add it on
> >> more pages. There are several themes in the repository
> >> though that have absolutely 100% wrong canonical links in
> >> their header.
> >>
> >> This one: http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/digu is an
> >> example. It's not popular and hasn't been updated in ages
> >> so I wouldn't normally care too much, but I wanted to use
> >> it as an example. It has the following code:
> >>
> >> <?php if(is_single()){ ?><link rel="canonical" href="<?php
> >> echo get_permalink($post->ID),"\n";?>" /><?php }?>
> >> <?php if(is_home() || is_tag() || is_category() ||
> >> is_month() || is_year()){ ?>
> >> <link rel="canonical" href="<?php bloginfo('url');?>"
> >> /><?php echo "\n"; }?>
> >> …. snip ….
> >> <?php } ?>
> >>
> >> Using that theme on a live site could kill your rankings
> >> instantly, as it would make all category listings etc have
> >> canonicals linking back to the homepage. In most cases
> >> this would prevent Google from spidering the links to the
> >> posts on those pages.
> >>
> >> Now some themes, like Thematic and Hybrid, have somewhat
> >> more sensible canonical functions, which makes this a hard
> >> discussion. I would vote to call it plugin territory
> >> though and keep it out of themes completely. Would love to
> >> hear your opinions.
> >>
> >> Best
> >> Joost
> >>
> >>
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